About the Open Source Cajon
A cajón is a wooden box drum you sit on and play with your hands. Sean Hodgins designed this one in CAD as a Christmas present and published the files openly so anyone can make one. He cut his body pieces on a CNC router to save time, but the shapes are simple rectangles and the author says you can cut them by hand just as well.
The body is ½″ Baltic birch; the front playing surface (the tapa) is thin ⅛″ Baltic birch screwed on, never glued, so it can vibrate and be replaced. Inside, a snare arm made from the metal wires of a snare drum pivots on a dowel: a knob on the side locks it forward against the tapa for a buzzy snare sound or back for a clean tone.
Who it's for. Anyone with a saw, a drill and some clamps. It's a good first instrument for a woodworker, and one 5×5′ sheet of ½″ plywood makes two.
Licence. The Instructable is CC BY-NC-SA, so you can build and share it non-commercially. This page summarises the Instructable and video; we haven't built one ourselves.
What you'll need
Materials
- ½″ Baltic birch plywood (a 5×5′ sheet makes two)
- ⅛″ Baltic birch for the tapa (about 12×19″ per cajón)
- A 1″ wooden dowel
- Wood glue, ¾″ brad nails, screws for the tapa
- A finish (he used polymerised tung oil) and sandpaper
Bought parts
- The metal wires from a snare drum (cut in half, one set does two cajóns)
- Threaded inserts and a locking knob
- Optional: washers for the locking mechanism
Tools
- A saw (table saw or hand saw); a CNC router is optional
- A brad nailer or clamps
- A drill with a countersink bit
- A router with a roundover bit for the top edges
- A sander
Build overview
Our own outline of the 17 steps. Follow the full instructions on Instructables; the files are in the GitHub repository.
- Cut the pieces. Cut the body from ½″ birch and the tapa from ⅛″ birch, using the dimensioned drawings or CNC files.
- Assemble the box. Glue and brad-nail the sides, bottom and back with their inner supports. Only glue and clamp the top, so it can be rounded over later.
- Build the snare arm. Cut the dowel to sit in its holders, fit the snare arm with a threaded insert and locking knob, and screw on half a set of snare wires.
- Fit the tapa. Plan the screw pattern, drill pilot holes and countersink them so no screw heads stick out under your hands.
- Round, sand and finish. Round the top edges with a router, sand everything smooth, and finish the body and tapa separately so they don't stick together.
Video
Play video: The build video (loads YouTube)
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